Pasternak, Autobiography & My Poetry

[RonPrice]

THINKING OF YOU, BORIS PASTERNAK

The famous Russian poet, Boris Pasternak, said that to be a great poet it was not enough to write poetry. One must also “contribute in some vital way to the life of the times.” It is essential that such a poet, Pasternak emphasized, “respond submissively to a high and lonely destiny.” Such a poet did not chose poetry as a vocation but was singled out, in some unmistakable fashion, by destiny. Pasternak was “overcome by an irresistible urge to write poetry.” Poetry literally seized possession of him in 1912/13. In the next few years he was confirmed in this overpowering sense that poetry came naturally to him. But it did not consume him and he did not project himself as a poet and its intermittent inspirations.

I was attracted to this analysis of Pasternak and his work in Max Hayward’s introduction to Olga Ivinskaya’s biography of Pasternak:A Captive of Time: My Years With Pasternak(Fontana, 1978). I had a similar experience, not in my early adulthood, as was the case with Pasternak, but in middle age, in my late forties. At first, I too did not project myself as a poet but, by my early sixties, the early years of my late adulthood(age 60 to 80), I had become comfortable with this label, this literary avocation, this terminological assignation, this new, this fresh and personal poetic nomenclature. For by then I had contributed to my society in a vital way as a teacher for over 30 years and to the community life in many Baha'i groups in both Canada and Australia. My emotions and perceptions have now gone through at least fifteen years(1992-2007) of an exceptional pitch of intensity; an impetuous flow of language has been released, a flow which shows no signs of letting up.-Ron Price with thanks to Max Hayward, “Introduction,” A Captive of Time: My Years With Pasternak, Olga Ivinskaya, Fontana Books, 1978.

It was not a revolution and a love affair
that brought on this impetuous flow;
I’m not sure I will ever know for sure
but it was another type of love affair
that had slowly ripened over decades,
so unobtrusively amidst the ragged bone
and chouder shops, the fatigue, the talking--
the endless talking not to mention listening—
surely one of life’s most demanding tasks
after fifty years(1949-1999) of being subjected
to an excess of speech and its deadly poisons.

I, too, Boris, had my melancholy and depressions,
so low I fell in love with thanatos, easeful death,
but, as you said, there would appear once more
“things that have long lain dormant: noble, creative
and great things...a time of final accounting.”
And, Boris, it has appeared and I think of you.1

1 Boris Pasternak, Front Page in Olga Ivinskaya, op.cit. Pasternak told his readers to think of him after he has passed on, when life would be richer and more fruitful than ever before, at a time of a great accounting.

Ron Price
26 July 2007